Lula’s Health: The Medical History of the Leader Returning to Power at 76

After defeating President Jair Bolsonaro, Former Socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will return to power As one of the men Long time He was the President of Brazil. But the leader of the Workers’ Party (PT) is not the 58-year-old staunch trade unionist he was when he first became president in 2002.

At 76, the future president, An ex-smoker who beat laryngeal cancerHe tried his best Presents an image of vitality In the campaign towards the ballot. Today he has a very rough voice and sometimes finds it difficult to make himself heard in front of a crowd.

“I have to stop speaking for a month to recover,” the former union leader joked before winning the October 30 election. Lula smoked for fifty years Stop smoking In 2010, at the age of 64, after being hospitalized for high blood pressure.

Lula returned, but neither Brazil nor the region was the same

When he left power in 2011, Diagnosed with laryngeal cancer and underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Doctors declared a “full recovery” the following year, but his poor voice has led some to attack him for his health during the current campaign, particularly his centre-left rival Ciro Gomez in the first round. ““Lula is physically and psychologically weaker every day,” Gomez wrote on social media., he questioned his ability to take on Bolsonaro. Later, Gómez retracted his statements and admitted that he had been “very harsh” with Lula.

Someone who knew Lula well described him as “more like Perón than Getlio Vargas.”

The seventh son of an illiterate couple, Lula was abandoned by his father before the family moved, like millions of countrymen, to industrialized São Paulo. He was a street vendor and shoe boy. At the age of 14, he began his apprenticeship as a lathe operator, lost a little finger while operating the machine, and in the late 1970s, as president of the Metalworkers Union, he led a historic strike challenging the military dictatorship. (1964-1985).

The former president married María de Lourdes da Silva in 1969, who died two years later of hepatitis in the seventh month of pregnancy, along with the child he was expecting. A tragedy struck deeply in Lula da Silva’s life as she took months to recover from the depression.

In 1974 he married Marisa Leticia, who died of a stroke in 2017, and had four children. “When you lose your wife, life has no meaning, and you think everything is over, a person appears and he starts to feel it again.”Lula told the press this year Time.

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“Update My Image”

Lula, a key figure in Brazilian politics for four decades, did everything to look fresh: The former president lifted weights on Instagram, wearing a tank top that exposed his toned biceps: “I wake up every morning at 5:30 and do gymnastics. I want to live to be 120,” read the caption that accompanied the photo.

Lula worked out on social networks, played the drums or faced the waves in the ocean. Further She said she was “in love like she was in her 20s”. Rosangela “Zanja” da SilvaA 56-year-old sociologist He got married last May. A month ago, he changed his profile picture, in which he wears sunglasses with violet lenses, popular among young people in the favelas: “They asked me to update my image on social networks”Justified.

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He spent 580 days in Curitiba prison after being convicted of corruption The case of Lava Jato, Lula kept fit by running 9km a day on the treadmill, as mentioned. Also, he was undergoing treatment high blood pressure and was accompanied by an oncologist.

But the left-wing leader knows his age is not an advantage, and admitted during a grueling campaign that he would not seek re-election in 2026: “Everyone knows I have four years to do everything. A citizen cannot seek re-election at the age of 81,” he added. “Nature is unforgiving.”

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